


Taboo

by justaphage



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, Pining, Podfic Available, Post Garden of Eden, great pustulent mangled bollocks to the Great Blasted Plan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 03:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20923145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justaphage/pseuds/justaphage
Summary: Taboo (n)- a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thingBefore the fall, they were soulmates. Aziraphale forgets; Crawly is cursed to remember.





	Taboo

**Author's Note:**

> This started as me thinking about what it would mean to do a soulmate AU in this verse. I thought it had great angst potential, but then realized it basically wouldn't change the TV canon at all as they literally keep following each other around for _six thousand years_ you know, like soulmates. So I wrote a little angsty concept sketch. If anyone is more creative and would like to use this particular spin on it to write their own fic, or just yell at me about it in the comments, that would be lovely. 
> 
> Thanks to [narcissisticSpaghetti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissisticSpaghetti/pseuds/narcissisticSpaghetti) for the spelling/grammar beta.

“Don’t you have one?” Asks Crawly.

Aziraphale has been watching a pair of angels in the distance, preening the first rain from each other’s feathers. Crawly has been watching him.

“Hmm?” Aziraphale doesn’t look back at him.

“I said, don’t you have one— a soulmate?”

“No, I don’t,” Aziraphale replies matter of fact, and then adds, like he’s just been struck by it, “not anymore.”

“Not anymore? How—what? What does that mean?”

“They must’ve—” Aziraphale finally looks away from the angels in the distance, but doesn’t turn to Crawly. Instead he stares, unfocused, at the rolling sands before them. “They must have died in the War in Heaven. I’m not the only one… None of the unpaired can remember.”

“How do you know they died then? How do you know they’re not—” Crawly gets stuck there, apparently that’s as close as he can get to the truth. His hands flail in a vague gesture, hoping Aziraphale will guess the obvious other option.

“Oh no! That wouldn’t be possible. I mean, honestly Crawly, how could soulmates end up on opposite sides of a war?”

_Because I didn’t know that was what I was doing! I didn’t mean to fall or else I would have said something! And you would have stopped me, or we would have gone down together, or anything but this! _Crawly shouts in his mind, but outwardly, remains in cursed silence.

The light of Aziraphale’s flaming sword flickers just barely through the dense jungle. The humans have been cast out of God’s favor now as well, but they still have each other and another one of them on the way. Do they feel the way he does, his heart a gaping wound and the one thing he needs to heal it steps away and yet forever out of reach?

“Seems a bit unfair though. Not like you did anything wrong...the Almighty didn’t give you a new one?”

“Soulmates are cut from the same cloth at their creation. I could no more get a new soulmate than Eve could return to Adam’s rib cage.”

A surge of joy boils up in him at that, and Crawly thinks, for the first time, that he must actually belong in Hell. He shouldn’t want it to be like this, Aziraphale suffering for his mistakes. It’s a cruel and twisted desire, he _deserves_ to burn for how cruel it is, but he can’t let go. Aziraphale had been _his; _they had been made for each other_. _If he can’t have him, no one should.

It’s a sick comfort knowing their link is as indelible as it feels to him, but he’ll take it. Sick comforts are likely the best he’ll be getting from now on.

“Why though?” Crawly knows he should leave it be, _Satan_, he should leave be for _once_. Asking questions is what got him into this mess, but there’s not much point in stopping now is there?

“Why what?”

“Why, if everything that’s happened is part of some great plan—” Crawly spits the word like it’s poison—“make you a soulmate and then...“

Unable to continue whether from the Almighty’s prohibition or just sheer rage at the situation, Crawly gestures sharply to Aziraphale’s moping form.

“I’m sure there’s a reason” Aziraphale furrows his brow, like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything. “I’m meant to watch over the humans, perhaps somehow this will make me better at it”

“That’s a stupid reason,” Crawly mutters. What he means is: _any plan that does this to us is stupid. _What he’s trying not to think is: _maybe you were meant to be here with me. _

Aziraphale only huffs in reply. He’s avoiding looking at Crawly now, casting about for something else to focus on. But that inevitably draws his gaze back to the mates in the distance. The frustrated tension melts from his face back into that same naked longing from before. His whole body sags, soaked wings drooping so far down the perfect white tips are sticking in the mud.

Crawly thinks his pointless heart might crash straight out of his chest. It’s too cruel, crueler even than an unending fall and his wings burning from the inside out. And Crawly had at least done something! He isn’t exactly sure he _deserved_ what he got, but Aziraphale? Aziraphale is innocent. He shouldn’t be cursed with half a soul, wandering the earth alone..

If there is no one else for Aziraphale, then Crawly would have to try himself, to come back to him even though it would only be a shadow of what they had before. He can still offer comfort, can’t he?

“I could—ah—do yours for you, since you kept me dry and all.”

“That’s not what it’s about.” Aziraphale snaps his wings in close to his body, edges away.

“I know, Angel,” says Crawly, because of course he does. The times they’d preened before his Fall flash before Crawly’s eyes, wrapped up in each other, hardly anything that needed cleaning or straighten at all in those days, just _taking care. _He supposes he’s not allowed to have even that.

* * *

Crowley never can say it. In all those years, sticking close and hoping Aziraphale will figure it out, he never finds a combination of words that will shake loose that memory.

Crowley _can_ say:

“We’ll go off together”

“All of _us,_ against all of them”

“We’re on _our_ side”

It’s a different kind of love, infinitely more human, a love that they chose, together_._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Taboo, by justaphage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21077315) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)


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